The US justice system has a lot of similarities to that of the UK. That’s not surprising as much of the US legal system was inspired by that of the UK insofar as things like the concept of innocent until proven guilty, the right to fair trials and the jury system. However there are aspects of the US system that differ greatly from that of the UK. In many US states there is a considerable amount of pre-trial debate and comment in the media, something that is forbidden in the UK in order to not unduly influence criminal trials. Some US states also have a very liberal attitude to how jurors can behave. Unlike in the UK, jurors in criminal trials are not always forbidden to speak publicly about the case they’ve been a part of when it is concluded.
It is the aspect of a juror being able to speak about a case in the USA that could mean that there could be an application for a mistrial in the case of Ghislaine Maxwell and that this application might be successful. It turns out that a juror in the Maxwell case revealed in the Jury Room to other jurors that he had been sexually abused in the past and that he convinced the jury that the ‘imperfect recollections’ of witnesses who alleged that they were victims of Maxwell did not mean that the witness was not telling the truth.
Whether you like it or not this revelation is a matter of concern as here we have a possible situation where a juror with a strong opinion of certain matters has apparently convinced a jury to disregard any doubts that they may have about the truthfulness of a witness. In other words the jury has come to a decision based not on the evidence that they’ve heard in the courtroom but on the personal experiences of one of the jurors that is unrelated to the courtroom evidence.
I don’t know why the juror in this case decided to voice their opinion to the media but it has damaged the case against Maxwell a case that was carefully put together by the prosecution and which focused on those aspects that were most likely to garner a conviction. The juror has got his fifteen minutes of fame but at the cost of possibly giving Maxwell a legal get out.
The lawyers for Maxwell have according to press reports got until the 19th of this month to apply for a retrial and the juror in question has been offered legal counsel by the judge who presided over the Maxwell case. The jury was carefully selected to exclude those who had strong views on the matter at hand in order to ensure that the trial was fair. Why this potentially biased juror and his views was not picked up on before empanelling is a bit of a mystery. Did the jury selection process mess up? Did the juror not see the question or give a dishonest answer to it? Were the questions asked of the potential jurors clear enough? We will not know until much later.
What we do know is that the alleged actions of this juror might end up in the scrapping of an already expensive trial and the need for a fresh trial. The juror’s alleged actions have created a massive open goal for the defence and I would not be at all surprised to see an application for a retrial approved.
